Why India Wouldn’t Buy American Fighter Jets

In April, India delivered the bad news to U.S. defense contractors that they weren’t going to get an estimated $11 billion contract to deliver 126 multi-role fighter jets to New Delhi in coming years.

Courtesy Lockheed Martin

Indian officials have said the U.S. warplanes didn’t meet India’s technical requirements. But that explanation hasn’t convinced all defense analysts.

Despite the promising developments in U.S.-India military cooperation that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted on her trip to India this week the kicking of U.S. firms to the curb on the mega jet deal was a setback for Washington after its sustained lobbying effort.

Indian officials have said the U.S. warplanes – Boeing’s F/A 18 and Lockheed Martin’s F-16 – didn’t meet India’s technical requirements. But that explanation hasn’t convinced all defense analysts.

Advertisement

In an interview earlier this week with the U.S. National Bureau of Asian Research, U.S.-India defense expert Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, laid out some more provocative theories. India is “uneasy” about using U.S. planes on missions that could involve combat in Pakistan, he said, and “there may also be U.S. laws limiting the planes from carrying nuclear weapons.”

But the real reason U.S. hopes were spiked, Mr. Cohen said, was that India doesn’t think it can rely politically on Washington to supply planes over the long-term. “India would have given the order to a U.S. firm if it had been assured that the United States would back India politically thereafter,” Mr. Cohen said in the interview. “Since this guarantee was not available, and awarding a U.S. firm the contract would increase Washington’s ability to influence New Delhi, the United States was a not a good choice politically as a supplier.”

Of course, it’s possible that India just eliminated the U.S. jets because their specifications didn’t size up well against competitors, including Dassault, which is French, and the Eurofighter, which is made by a consortium of European companies; both those firms are still in contention for the deal. One person whose firm is still in the running said New Delhi looked favorably at those willing to make some substantive alterations to their products to meet its hundreds of technical requirements. (Swedish and Russian firms were also eliminated.)

A U.S. embassy spokesperson referred questions about India’s rationale on the jet contract to the Indian government; the Indian defense ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. “We continue to believe that U.S. systems offer India the best technology and capability, and represent the best value for a long-term investment in enhancing India’s capabilities,” the U.S. spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

A spokesman for Lockheed, in a statement, didn’t comment on the potential reasons behind India’s decision but said, “It was a tough competition that was executed in a very professional manner by the Indian Air Force.”

Boeing didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. spokesperson said the countries have an “overarching shared interest in promoting global security and stability” and will continue to pursue defense deals like India’s recent purchases of Lockheed-made C130J transport aircraft, Boeing’s P-8I maritime reconnaissance planes, and its approved purchase of Boeing’s C-17 transport aircraft in a deal worth $4.1 billion.

India will spend, by some estimates, over $100 billion by 2016 to upgrade aging military equipment and procure advanced new technologies. Its wide-ranging shopping list includes heavy-lift helicopters, submarines, tanks and howitzers. Though India has traditionally turned to Russia for three-quarters of its defense gear, including fighter jets, the U.S. has emerged as a real alternative. But overcoming the decades of Cold War-era mistrust hasn’t been easy.

The Indian government is in the process of comparing price bids of the two remaining candidates for the big fighter jet deal and will hold final negotiations to pick a winner, a process that will likely take until sometime next year.

– The jet in the photo that was previously posted with this blog was incorrectly identified as an F-16. The photo has been replaced.

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.